


Unforgettable

by voiceless_terror



Series: TMA Whumptober [6]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Whumptober 2020, prompt: crying, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voiceless_terror/pseuds/voiceless_terror
Summary: A photo is shoved into his hands. It is him and Jon and some woman. They all look quite cozy, but for the life of him he can’t remember what this was from. An outing when he first started? But he always remembered a beautiful woman’s face, and he would definitely remember hers-Jon finds a photo before he goes to destroy the table. He and Tim try to remember.
Relationships: Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Tim Stoker/Sasha James (implied)
Series: TMA Whumptober [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952800
Comments: 10
Kudos: 157





	Unforgettable

Jon is going to destroy that table.

He’s seen the statement with Adelard Dekker, he’s found and heard the tapes of the real Sasha. The Sasha that Melanie described. The Sasha that is _not_ the Sasha who wandered off to the research department earlier that day. He knows there’s no chance of the real one coming back, the statement said as much. _She’s dead._ But maybe if he can destroy that _thing_ and whatever houses it, he can give her some sort of peace. Give him and Tim and Martin peace. 

And maybe, where ever she is, Sasha will forgive him for being so, _so_ stupid. For forgetting her.

His chair screeches back as he stands up, bumping into the cabinet behind him. He’s going to the nearest hardware store and he’s finding a goddamn weapon- a bat or an axe or anything that looks like it will get the job done. 

_I thought it was pronounced “Ka-lee-o-pee?”_ Her voice was so friendly. So approachable, with its teasing lilt. But no, he and Sasha weren’t friends. They were colleagues, that’s all. He chose her because of her work ethic and no-nonsense attitude. Not because they were friends.

Something skitters at his feet. Jon jumps, his heart hammering as he sees a spider out of the corner of his eye crawl out from under the cabinet. It disturbs a few papers that were hiding underneath, their corners now visible. There’s something to the spiders, he realizes. He feels compelled to pick up those papers and see what they reveal. He follows this impulse.

In his hands are a few wrinkled notes from a previous case, one that he dismissed as fake right off the bat. _Not important._ Jon sighs and moves to plop them on his desk when a smaller, thicker peace of paper falls onto his chair.

It is a photo.

There he is, several years younger. It must be from around 2013, when Tim first started at the institute as he’s by his side, smiling widely with a companionable arm slung around Jon’s shoulder. _Back when he liked me._ Even Jon is smiling in the picture, albeit awkwardly. But there is another in the photo- a tall, dark-skinned woman with long braids and round glasses. She’s got her arm around his other shoulder like they know each other. Jon cannot place her, but he was obviously comfortable enough with her to take this photo. He flips it over to the back to find a date, but instead sees an inscription in an unfamiliar handwriting. 

_Jon- congrats on the promotion! Don’t forget your roots! - x Sasha_

Sasha. This is- _was_ his Sasha. And it is all at once too much.

His eyes began to water uncontrollably, a sob building in his throat. It was somehow easier to only have her voice, but to see her _face_ and her _note_ and the smile in her eyes and not remember any of it sends an unbearable pain through his chest. She was important to him and he couldn’t give her the dignity of remembering her face, even now.

There are sounds coming from his throat, horrible and wretched but he cannot stop them. He needs to find Tim. He needs him to see her face. He needs to know he’s not the only one who’s forgotten.

* * *

  
  


Tim is waiting on Martin to come back from the library- it’s been a hell of a day and he needs a drink, stat. He’s not good company these days, and Martin continually irritates him with his fussing and mothering both of him and Jon. But at least he’s someone, and Tim can’t be alone right now. It’s not like he could ask Jon or Sasha to come.

He starts to hear noises from his boss’s office, strange and sorrowful. Something long buried in him wants to go in there, make sure Jon’s alright. But the other half of him is too consumed in his rage at this stupid, paranoid little man he once called a friend. So he sits and waits. If Jon needs something he’s going to have to come to him.

And he does.

The door to Jon’s office swings open and he tumbles out, looking more pathetic than usual. And he's...crying? No, that wasn’t the right word for it. The sounds that were coming out of his mouth are more akin to a stifled scream. In spite of himself, he feels his heart clench and he gets to his feet.

“Jon,” he starts warily. “What’s going-”

_“Sasha!”_ Jon’s eyes are wild as he stumbles forward, grabbing onto Tim’s shirt. He’s shaking so hard that Tim’s hands automatically go to his sides to keep him steady. “She’s- she’s _wrong,_ Tim. We forgot Sasha.”

_What?_ He had to be hallucinating or on some sort of drug. Christ, he really is that far gone.

“Jon,” he tries to pry the man’s hands off his shirt in vain. “Jon, go home or go to the doctor, I can’t-”

_“Look!”_ A photo is shoved into his hands. _Huh?_

It is him and Jon and some woman. They all look quite cozy, but for the life of him he can’t remember what this was from. An outing when he first started? But he always remembered a beautiful woman’s face, and he would _definitely_ remember hers-

“It’s Sasha,” Jon cries, giving Tim’s arms a feeble shake. Tim would roll his eyes but a sudden sense of dread is a leaden weight in his stomach. _Who is this?_

“No, Jon, no it’s not,” he insists, one hand shoving the man away and the other tightly gripping the photo. “I don’t know who the hell this is,” he says, even as his mind screams _you know you know-_

Jon stumbles against the wall, heaving breaths still not under control. He looks at Tim with wild eyes. “Flip it over, Tim.” He does.

There is a note. The writing is unfamiliar but the hand that wrote it is not. He sees a flash of a smile and a memory, a late night in the bar and a stolen kiss and that hand on his face-

“What the _fuck_ is going on, Jon,” his voice is tremulous and the tears build behind his eyes, both in rage and unexplainable grief. “Who- _who is this?”_

“Sasha,” the one word is spoken like a mumbled prayer and Tim knows Jon’s right. “Come- come listen to the tapes, I have the tapes.” He robotically follows Jon to his office, watching blankly as the man collapses into his chair, still sniffling, and presses play on a tape recorder.

And it's a voice. It's _her_ voice. Not the Sasha now, no, it’s the one he knew and loved and spilled his secrets to. It’s putting the voice to that smiling face in the photo that breaks him. Is he crying? He can’t tell. All he knows is that both Sashas are strangers to him but one is warm and comforting and telling him “I’m unforgettable,” in that sweet, teasing voice. “I’m unforgettable”- and yet her face keeps slipping from his mind even as he stares at it immortalized in print.

Jon is talking- something about a Not!Them, a statement, a table. He can’t comprehend the words.

He interrupts Jon’s rambling. “What are we going to do?” He asks, voice hardening as tears trail down his cheeks. There is a woman who sits next to him day after day who is not what she says she is. There is a woman, cold and distant and professional with a blank smile calling itself Sasha.

“I was going to...destroy the table. I don’t know what it will do, but it has to do _something,_ right?”

“Maybe,” Tim agrees, though the sentiment is hollow. What can they do now, anyway? Sasha’s gone and there’s no place for him to lay flowers, no memorial with her name. All he has is a crumpled photo in his hands and the vague memory of Sasha’s voice as she wrote the words inscribed- _I’m still pissed, but it’s not his fault. I think it would really help him if he knew we were in his corner-_

He stares at the man in front of him. The man who most assuredly hasn’t been in his corner when Tim needed him most. The man he followed down from research in the hopes of finding something about the thing that took his brother. The man who damned them all to their fate, however unknowingly.

“Tim,” Jon says, his eyes desperate and bright. “Tim, we were _friends._ ” He has a feeling Jon isn’t just referring to Sasha, not with the way those eyes bore into his own.

“Yeah,” he replied, returning the stare. His memories are scattered- nights out with Jon that had a third figure in the shadows, a woman he can’t remember but aches for. Not just a colleague but someone he loved, once. “We were.”

**Author's Note:**

> Did I finally do an angsty Whumptober and upset myself? You bet. 
> 
> I'm still not and will never be over Sasha James. So here you go, some feelings to go along with that. Let me know your thoughts, always appreciate the comments you guys leave even though I'm slow in responding!
> 
> Thanks for reading. You can reach me @voiceless-terror on tumblr. Until next time!


End file.
